Analytics and the Firefox User Experience

John Lilly recently wrote an excellent post about our passion around the Firefox user experience. I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about how this same mission applies to marketing and analytics at Mozilla. Perhaps a story would be a good way to start this discussion…

Yesterday, I spent some time on Google’s localized sites (e.g., www.google.cn) searching for Firefox related terms. I was curious if a new Firefox user is able to easily find a Mozilla related web site and download Firefox if he/she decides that’s what they want to do. For the most part, the answer seems to be “yes” – search for “firefox” in other Google language versions and our web sites (and affiliates) occupy the top search results. There was one exception, though, where this was not the case (I’d prefer for the locale be remain nameless). Searching for “firefox” in this particular locale showed a questionable site as the #2 result and a “mozilla” search displayed a questionable site as the #1 search result. Within a few minutes, I created an adwords campaign for just that locale to ensure that more new users are able to more easily find us (we’re also working on a few other longer-term solutions).

So, you may be wondering why, between this story and previous posts on this blog, I’m so obsessed with search marketing? In short, it’s because of the Firefox user experience.

Typically, user experience is defined by a user’s experience and direct interaction with a product. With Firefox, for example, direct interaction consists of many things: all the technologies and development that goes into the product itself, as well as the forward facing interface (e.g., all the great work done by folks like Mike Beltzner and Alex Faaborg).

I’d like to add a slightly broader definition of “user experience.” For me at least, it seems as though a user’s experience with Firefox begins at the moment that person conceives the idea in their mind that they’d like to try Firefox. Once that idea is conceived, the user then attempts to find Firefox (e.g., perhaps they already know about www.mozilla.com or perhaps they go to a search engine). And once the user takes this step, he/she makes a few clicks and navigates their way to the download process. All of these interactions are important in this broader view of “user experience,” and making these interactions as efficient and delightful as possible for the user drives much of the marketing and analytics efforts here at Mozilla.

2 responses

For what it’s worth, I totally agree, and that’s why pkim and jslater kinda shiver whenever I poke my head in and start asking about designs for mozilla.com. It’s also why I’m thrilled to see the analytics work being done on the website.

I would go further still, though – the user experience of Firefox is the whole Firefox Phenomenon: getting the idea, finding it online (was it easy to find? was the website helpful?), downloading (quick? simple?), installing (quick? simple?), running it for the first time (gets you to the web easily? offers to show you around?) and then the overall experience as you visit websites. When users run into problems (site compatibility, system crashes, unable to find that site they were at before) that’s all part of the experience. Even the uninstall (goodbye! thanks for trying!) experience is important.